This invention relates a plasma cleaning device for a substrate board which cleans the surface of a base board with plasma.
A plasma cleaning method is known as a method of cleaning the surface of a substrate (disclosed for instance by the Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Publication No. Hei 6-21032). In the method, the surface treatment of a substrate is performed as follows: A plasma is produced in a pressured reduced atmosphere, and the plasma thus produced is applied to the surface of a substrate to clean it. In the method, it is necessary to provide a vacuum chamber for a pressure-reduced atmosphere, and an electrode to which high frequency voltage is applied to produce a plasma. Hence, it is necessary to open and close the vacuum chamber for every cleaning operation.
In general, downstream of the plasma cleaning device, units such as a wiring bonding unit are provided. In order to improve the production efficiency, it is preferable that the plasma cleaning device is smoothly connected to the units such as a wiring bonding unit which are provided downstream of the plasma cleaning device to arrange the device in line with the units thereby to smoothly convey a substrate to the units downstream of the device. However, with the plasma cleaning device, it is necessary to open and close the vacuum chamber for every cleaning work. On the other hand, different substrates have different widths (being different in size) - if a kind of substrate to be plasma-cleaned is changed with another kind of substrate, then the latter is different in size (width) from the former. Hence, it is rather difficult to arrange the plasma cleaning device in line with the units such as a wiring bonding unit which are arranged downstream of the plasma cleaning device. That is, the process efficiency is low.